Three of interest
Well — I was right, sad to say … MoveOn’s ad created a dust-up that deflects the issues and has created dialogue that was quite unnecessary; the last thing we needed was a defense posture for Petraues from the Left, and that’s what we’ve got. I have not participated much with MoveOn this last year as they’re painted Far Left, their voice pigeon-holes folks; there are lots of alternative activist/op’s on the same issues that MoveOn has promoted, so I’ve become selective on how I use my voice. The whole dynamic of web activism is new enough so we can’t be entirely sure how these things impact, but we can be sure that the gaffe’s are inappropriately distracting to the message — I’ve become wary. Politics, as played, is a game … sometimes best to sacrifice Pawns to empower Knights and Castles. I can’t help but think this last business didn’t help their cause … or ours.
FireDogLake is the go-to spot, as usual, for real-time blogging info on the Petreaus Report.
Here are some good reads — Albright with one way to view our current challenge, and 60’s activist and politician, Tom Hayden with another … both come from the “common sense” model, though, with Albright’s being more the traditional government status quo wing. No matter what you think of her and the status quo, good sense is a relief to hear! Happens so seldom, doncha know … and Hayden is downright inspiring!
The last piece in this short collection is another part of the “change” puzzle — all this Iraq hooplah would make you think there’s only one issue on the table for the ‘08 race … but that’s not how it’s shaking out. The Dem’s have a lot of long-ignored and smelly fish to fry here, and the homefront issues [health care, taxes, education, economy, immigration] continue to absorb them, as they should — not so with the Pubs, who are stuck in moldy old Dubby-axiom “post-9/11″ thinking. As long as they continue to sing Just One Note, they are ignoring not only the will of the people, but their interests, worries and passions, as well.
The WORLD has moved on from that conversation and is more invested … I certainly am … in “post-BUSH” thinking [which, of course, is ACTUAL THINKING.] What a concept, huh??
Interesting reads, below.
Jude
How To Change Iraq
Bush Should Start By Admitting Fault
Madeleine K. Albright, Washington Post
Thursday, September 6, 2007
The threshold question in any war is: What are we fighting for? Our troops, especially, deserve a convincing answer.
In Iraq, the list of missions that were tried on but didn’t fit includes: protection from weapons of mass destruction, creating a model democracy in the Arab world, punishing those responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks and stopping terrorists from catching the next plane to New York. The latest mission, linked to the “surge” of troops this year, was to give Iraqi leaders the security and maneuvering room needed to make stabilizing political arrangements — which they have thus far shown little interest in doing.
A cynic might suggest that the military’s real mission is to enable President Bush to continue denying that his invasion has evolved into disaster. A less jaded view might identify three goals: to prevent Iraq from becoming a haven for al-Qaeda, a client state of Iran or a spark that inflames regionwide war. These goals respond not to dangers that prompted the invasion but to those that resulted from it. Our troops are being asked to risk their lives to solve problems our civilian leaders created. The president is beseeching us to fear failure, but he has yet to explain how our military can succeed given Iraq’s tangled politics and his administration’s lack of credibility.
This disconnect between mission and capabilities should be at the center of debate as Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker report on the war’s status and congressional leaders prepare their fall strategies. Despite the hopes of many, this debate is unlikely to end the war soon; nor will it produce fresh support for our present dismal course. Although U.S. troop levels will surely start to come down, big decisions about whether and under what circumstances to complete the withdrawal seem certain to remain for the next president, when he or she takes office. Yet this should not preclude Democrats and Republicans from trying to agree on ways to minimize the damage before then.
According to the National Intelligence Estimate released last month, the recent modest but extremely hard-won military gains will mean little “unless there is a fundamental shift in the factors driving Iraqi political and security developments.”
Given the depth of the sectarian divisions within Iraq, such a fundamental shift will not occur through Iraqi actions alone. Given America’s lack of leverage, it will not result from our patrols, benchmarks, speeches or “surprise” presidential visits to Anbar province. That leaves coordinated international assistance as the only option.
The Balkans are at peace today through the joint efforts of the United States, the European Union and the United Nations — all of which worked to help moderate leaders inside the region. A similar strategy should have been part of our Iraq policy from the outset but has never been seriously attempted.
Is such an initiative still viable? Perhaps. The United Nations has pledged to become more involved. Europe’s new leaders — led by Nicolas Sarkozy, Angela Merkel and Gordon Brown — understand their region’s stake in Iraq’s future and seem willing to assist. The Saudi, Jordanian and Syrian governments all view Iraqi instability as a profound security threat. Turkish and Kurdish representatives recently signed an agreement to cooperate along their troubled border.
Iran is the wildest of cards, but it would be unlikely to isolate itself from a broad international program aimed at reconciliation. If it does, it would only hand a political victory to us and to the many Iraqi leaders, Shiite and Sunni alike, who would prefer to minimize Iranian influence.
President Bush could do his part by admitting what the world knows — that many prewar criticisms of the invasion were on target. Such an admission would be just the shock a serious diplomatic project would need. It would make it easier for European and Arab leaders to help, as their constituents are reluctant to bail out a president who still insists that he was right and they were wrong. Our troops face death every day; the least the president can do is face the truth.
A coordinated international effort could help Iraq by patrolling borders, aiding reconstruction, further training its army and police, and strengthening legislative and judicial institutions. It could also send a unified message to Iraq’s sectarian leaders that a political power-sharing arrangement that recognizes majority rule and protects minority rights is the only solution and is also attainable.
If there is a chance to avoid deeper disaster in Iraq, it depends on a psychological transformation so people begin preparing to compete for power peacefully instead of plotting how to survive amid anarchy. The international community cannot ensure such a shift, but we can and should do more to encourage it. ++
The writer was secretary of state from 1997 to 2001. She is principal of theAlbright Group LLC.
Ending the War in 2009
Tom Hayden, CommonDreams
Saturday, September 8, 2007
Let me tell you what the supporters of endless occupation are worried about. A Washington think tank, the Center for a New American Security, whose board includes Madeline Albright, Lockheed Martin, and Raytheon recently warned that
- The transition from President Bush is getting more and more problematic as the American people continue to lose confidence in the Iraq War and step up their pressure on candidates from both parties. If no bipartisan consensus is reached before the Democratic and Republican primaries, the next president will likely be elected principally on a “get out of Iraq” platform. The political space to do otherwise is shrinking by the day.”
Contrary to their worries, I thought: What a great prospect, that the American people through the democratic process can force the end of this war, can discredit the neo-conservatives agenda, can defeat the Bush-Cheney legacy, can rebuke hawkish mentality in both parties, and can drive the discussion of our future. I have written Ending the War in Iraq to hasten this possibility.
The conventional thinking that led us into quagmire is the same conventional thinking that says today that while it was a mistake to invade in 2003 it would be a bigger mistake to ever leave. These are not just White House flacks or Bush administration dead-enders, but friends we respect such as James Fallows has written -
- I have come to this sobering conclusion. The United States can best train Iraqis, and therefore best help itself leave Iraq, only by making a long-term commitment to stay.
Too many are governed by the paradigm that we can never “stand down” until the Iraqis themselves “stand up”, that we have to fight the insurgency to create space for the Iraqi government to become stable enough to secure itself, and only then can we leave.
The truth being denied is that we have funded, equipped, and trained a Frankenstein monster, and now multiple frankensteins, and they are indeed standing up. In any other conflict, the Iraqi regime and security forces would be called a police state. Yet we remain in denial because the truth would undermine the war’s very rationale.. Even today, a prestigious military commission headed by General Jones reports that the Iraqi police force is hopelessly sectarian and should be scrapped. The media denial is evident in the coverage: the ninth paragraph on page 8 of the New York Times, the 25th paragraph on page 8 of the LA Times.
This is not new news. The Baker-Hamilton report last year said that the Iraqi police “routinely engage in sectarian violence, including the unnecessary detention, torture and targeted execution of Sunni Arab civilians.”
The illusion is that the sectarian militias are outside the Iraqi state and must be reined in, when the reality is that the biggest militias are inside the interior ministry, inside the army, police and secret prisons, particularly the Badr Brigade which belongs to SCIRI, the dominant party in the ruling coalition we put in power. Nineteen billion of our tax dollars have been spent on building the Iraqi security system.
It gets worse. As encouraged by Gen. Petraeus a few years ago, at least 190,000 American-made AK-47s and 370,000 small arms sent Iraq are unaccounted for, most of them without serial numbers. This mass distribution of weapons was deliberate, not accidental, according to the GAO and Special Inspector General.
The illusion is that we are preventing a sectarian civil war when the reality is that, in the best British tradition, we have been fomenting and feeding a civil war which will fragment, subdivide and eliminate the basis of Arab nationalism in Iraq.
The intellectual proponent of this division is Stephen Biddle of the Council on Foreign Relations, an on-the-ground adviser to Gen. Petraeus. Biddle writes that the US should support both sides in the civil war. We should arm the Sunnis to gain leverage against the very Shi’a we put in power, and we should increase the Shi’a ability to create mass violence as an incentive for the Sunnis to compromise on their demand to end the occupation. This was written in Foreign Affairs magazine in 2006.
The much-touted Petreaus plan to further divide Iraq by helping Sunnis fight other Sunnis in Anbar and Diyala provinces is little more than Kit Carson’s plan to arm the Ute mercenaries against the Navajo over a century ago. I make the comparison because the Sunni fighters on the US payroll are even called the “Kit Carson Scouts.”
All this is against current law, the Leahy Amendment of 1997 which expressly forbids US military assistance to governments or security forces that are known to be human rights violators. Why is this provision being ignored? Is it like the claim that violence is going down in parts of Baghdad, because there are fewer people for the death squads to kill. Will a day come when there will be no more human rights violations because there will be no more Iraqis with human rights to violate?
Fortunately, a few members of Congress - Maxine Waters, Barbara Lee, Lynn Woolsey - and one liberal think tank, the Center for American Progress, want to stop our taxes going for torture. Their HR 3134, just introduced, would require the end of all funding of the Iraqi army and police forces unless expressly approved by a vote of Congress. We need the media and groups like the clergy and the ACLU to pay attention to this developing issue. Americans may be uneasy about immediately cutting off funding for American troops in the field, but would be opposed to taxes going for secret torture chambers and ethnic cleansing.
There is a gaping hole in the major peace proposals from Baker-Hamilton to Feingold-Reid to Clinton and Obama. All the discussion is about withdrawing combat troops while leaving thousands of American troops as trainers and advisers to these feuding sectarian and dysfunctional Iraqi security forces. This is not a recipe for ending the war, but for turning it into a low-visibility, lower-casualty conflict like Afghanistan.
Partial troop reducaions may diminish public attention during the election year - that will be partly up to us - but are unlikely to alter the course of the war. It is hard to imagine fewer American troops, embedded as trainers and secret commandos, succeeding militarily where 162,000 could not.
So what’s the answer? In the debate on Capitol Hill, I favor setting a withdrawal deadline, which is the only way to begin the shift away from a military model to a conflict resolution model. But a deadline is not enough. I interviewed former CIA director John Deutch about a rational exit plan, and he stressed two essentials: [1] that the US has to decide to withdraw, which it has not, and [2] he stressed diplomacy with Iran, which he called the only country that could cause trouble during our withdrawal. He was implying negotiations with Iran to obtain what Richard Nixon once called a “decent interval” for the US to leave Vietnam.
We should call for a shift from warmaking to peacemaking through a diplomatic offensive, declaring a firm intention to withdraw all American troops and bases on a one-year timetable, which would create an immediate incentive for engagement on the part of Iran, Syria, the Arab League, the Europeans, Russians and Chinese, the UN. No one has an interest in joining the US in the occupation; everyone has a interest in minimizing a power vacuum as we leave. The issues to be resolved will be humanitarian assistance to 3-4 million refugees, economic reconstruction, and protection of all Iraqis from unrestrained vendettas. America should offer to assist by appointing a peace envoy and offering billions in reconstruction. The horrific damage cannot be undone but can be contained and mitigated.
Of course our government is following the absolute opposite course from that proposed by Deutch, and even has drawn up contingency plans for a possible escalation to Iran. Many of the neo-conservatives continue to push, as in Vietnam, for escalation as the solution to quagmire.
It is here that the force of public opinion really matters in the coming year, and election year when public opinion becomes most important to decision-makers.
I find that the peace movement has been misunderstood and underestimated these past five years.
This is partly because we are governed by past image of peace movements as strictly outside protests in the streets as during Vietnam. But those were times of deep exclusion, when many could not vote and were structurally outside the institutions. The image of a defiant draft-card burner or bleeding demonstrator remains in our heads when in reality the typical resister today is an outraged blogger.
Not that we haven’t been in the streets. On nine occasions, more than 100,000 people have assembled, several times in numbers closer to 500,000.
Nearly 200 city councils and legislatures have voted to oppose the war.
Public opinion came to view Iraq as a mistake more rapidly that the public did during Vietnam, according to Gallup surveys.
Cindy Sheehan and other military families have neutralized the old claims that the peace movement is against the troops.
Howard Dean shocked the Democratic Party when he became the Eugene McCarthy of 2003.
Michael Moore shocked everyone when his Farenheit set unprecedented box office records in 2004.
Robert Greeenwald’s videos and YouTube spots reach hundreds of thousands of people.
Fifty thousand people listen to Amy Goodman’s and Juan Gonzales “war and peace report” every morning in LA.
The Dixie Chicks stood their ground in Texas, defeated blacklisting, and still aren’t ready to make nice.
Members of MoveOn.org contributed $180 million to candidates in 2003-2004.
The 2004 election was the first in our history when the American voters turned out a Congressional majority over a war in progress.
Whether impeachment happens or not, the Bush Administration is being impeached in installments - Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Libby, Gonzales - they have failed to make Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame the Daniel Ellsbergs of this war.
The peace movement is suffering from success, not failure. There can be an identity crisis when marginalized people suddenly find themselves in the majority, but that is where we are.
I can hear some of you asking, How can we consider ourselves successful when Iraqis and Americans are dying every minute, when the juggernaut continues, when, when the system that produced Iraq is gearing up for Iran? All I can ask is that you not let the suffering break you, not let the suffering push you down ineffective roads, but turn the pain into a controlled and strategic rage that creates ripple effects towards justice.
The year 2009 will be decisive. This week comes the debate over the surge. Next week the president’s recommendations. Then the elusive search among the politicians for bipartisan consensus. Then the appropriations bill, then the new request for next year’s war funding, then the presidential primaries, all of that in the next six months. Then in April, comes the projected breaking point for the armed forces, when some troop withdrawals will have to begin or tours of duty extended to intolerable lengths. Then the political conventions in the protest-friendly cities of Denver and Minneapolis, and then the campaign itself.
Step by step, we all need to ensure that ending the war is the issue on which the elections turn.
Activists need to apply people pressure to the pillars of the policy: the pillars of public opinion, the pillar of budget funding, the pillar of military recruitment, the pillar of international support. The keys are simple.. Build the memberships of our local campaigns. Persuade more voters to demand rapid withdrawal as a condition of their support. Meet and confront military recruiters before they take more of our children. Reach our and form coalitions for a progressive budget.
Whatever the candidates say, the war in Iraq cannot be sustained as these pillars - voter support, infinite funding, ample troops and reserves - continue to crumble and fall. As the costs, including the costs of protest and a persistent public opinion, finally outweigh the perceived benefits, I believe the cold and rational elements of the establishment will decide to cut their losses.
Big donors - those who contribute many millions to the so-called 527 independent issue committees - can make a huge difference in ending the war this time instead of avoiding the issue as they did in 2004. This year the independent committees can fund television, radio, and grass-roots campaigns to force the issue in targeted precincts all across the country. There is the potential of having the best-funded peace movement in our history.
A peace movement that can make a real difference by door-knocking and phone calls to impact close elections, protests against recruiters trying to take our children, and building coalitions with all the groups like teachers and health care workers whose needs are ignored by the $200 million per day that goes to war.
A peace movement that not only demands but deserves an alliance with environmentalists because the center of the fight against global warming is the war over the oil fields of the Middle East.
A peace movement that demands and deserves an alliance with labor and consumers because the center of the fight for fair trade and against corporate privatization is Iraq where all government protections are being stripped away before the coming of the US and British oil companies.
A peace movement that demands and deserves the support of all believers in democracy because the makers of war and the National Security State are the greatest threat to our civil liberties today.
And finally, a peace movement that encourages the lessons of this war in order to prevent future undemocratic aggressions whether in the Middle East or Venezuela.
Iraq is the focal point for confronting the great issues of our future. The fight is on. As Bobby Sands, the Irish hunger striker used to say, everyone has a part to play, and our reward will be seen in the smiles of the children. ++
Tom Hayden is a former state senator and leader of Sixties peace, justice and environmental movements. He currently teaches at Pitzer College in Los Angeles.
Sour Americans Hungry for Change as Election Approaches
Steven Thomma, McClatchy Newspapers via CommonDreams
Monday, September 3, 2007
DES MOINES, Iowa - A year before they choose a new government for the post-Bush era, Americans are desperate to change the country’s course.
According to opinion polls and interviews with political experts and voters, the U.S. population is more liberal than at any time in a generation, hungering to end the Iraq war, turn inward and use the federal government to solve problems at home.
Still, polling indicates, some want to turn farther right, demanding that the country fence off its Southern border, expel illegal immigrants and rein in a federal government grown fat under a Republican government they now dismiss as incompetent.
The surveys point to one thing almost all Americans tend to agree on: They’re deeply unhappy with the way things are going in the United States and eager to move on. There’s virtually no appetite to extend the Bush era, as there was at the end of Ronald Reagan’s presidency in 1988 or Bill Clinton’s in 2000.
Just 1 in 5 Americans think the country is going in the right direction, the worst outlook since the Reagan-Bush era ended in 1992.
Less than one-third of Americans like the way the current President Bush is handling his job, among the lowest ratings in half a century. The people had similarly dismal opinions just before they ended the Jimmy Carter era in 1980, the Kennedy-Johnson years in 1968 and the Roosevelt-Truman era in 1952.
The ranks of people who want the government to help the poor have risen sharply since the early 1990s - dramatically among independents, but even among Republicans.
The public mood is evident in Iowa, the heartland state that votes first for major-party presidential nominees and a pivotal swing state in the last two presidential elections.
“People are very unhappy, very unsettled,” said Megan Phillips, a teacher from Centerville, a town of about 6,000 in southern Iowa.
Phillips once considered herself a proud Republican. Small-town. Anti-abortion. Pro-gun.
But she soured on Bush’s landmark education overhaul, the No Child Left Behind Act. And she turned against the war - and Bush - with a passion that underscores how deeply the national unity that rose up after 9-11 has given way to cynicism.
“People don’t trust anything coming out of Washington,” she said. “When Bush says we’re winning the war in Iraq, I say, ‘Oh really?’ The weapons of mass destruction weren’t there. Why are we still there? We want our people to come home. There are so many things at home that need to be taken care of.”
Her husband, Matt, works two jobs, one in a power plant in town, the other raising cattle on their farm. He’s also a Republican, but is starting to question the war and wonder whether the country should turn its focus homeward.
“Maybe we shouldn’t be there. Maybe we should get out,” he said. “I would never vote for a Democrat, and certainly not for Hillary Clinton. … But - and I hate to say it - but maybe a Democrat is more apt to get things done at home.”
As the cost of the war continues to rise, that’s one big common refrain: Stop spending money in Iraq, and spend it at home. It’s feeding a resurgence of support for liberal notions of using the federal government in ways that had been in decline for more than a decade.
“We need to fix things,” said Mary Howell, an independent from the Des Moines suburb of Urbandale. “We need to fix health care. We can spend billions in Iraq. But we have people at home who need help.”
Even with a healthy economy - a new census report this week showed the poverty rate declining for the first time this decade - a lot of people feel squeezed by gas prices, health-care costs and college tuition.
That doesn’t drive everyone to seek help from Washington, but most want something different.
“Things are a mess,” said George Wagner, an auto mechanic from Homestead, west of Iowa City. “Manufacturing jobs are disappearing. Big business is running Washington. The little guy gets left behind.”
Wagner, a libertarian, also wants the country to look homeward.
“We’re not the policeman of the world. We should make friends with the people overseas we can do business with, secure the borders and take care of the people at home. Take care of the infrastructure. Older folks, medical stuff. If we stop spending so much overseas, we could give that money to churches to take care of people.”
Of course, there are those who feel good about the economy, who don’t want to return to spending federal tax dollars to help the needy, who support the war.
“Things are in pretty good shape,” said Jim Granzow, a farmer and a Republican from Hubbard, Iowa.
Even among most Republicans, however, there’s disappointment in Bush and a restlessness for change. Stop illegal immigration. Curb runaway federal spending. Win in Iraq.
Bill Hileman, a furniture salesman from Honey Creek, a small town near the Nebraska border, is a Republican who wouldn’t want a third term for Bush.
“I’d look for another Republican,” Hileman said.
His main complaint? He thinks Bush let illegal immigration run amok. “There are too many illegals, even here. It’s hurting our economy and draining our resources.”
Chad Kluver, a pharmaceutical sales rep from the Des Moines suburb of Ankeny, voted for Bush but now wants someone who’ll win the Iraq war.
“I’m more jaded than anything else,” he said. “We were misled. But it would be ridiculous to back out now. We need to finish what we started. If we back out now, it was all in vain.
I want a candidate who can get it done as soon as possible and get the troops home.”
In a recent poll, 65 percent of Iowa Republicans said it was important to find a 2008 presidential candidate in the conservative mold of Reagan. Asked whether Bush fit that role, 8 percent said yes and 78 percent said no.
The survey also found that 51 percent of Iowa Republicans want to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq within six months.
“It’s a sour mood,” said David Johnson, a former aide to Kansas Republican Bob Dole’s 1996 presidential campaign. His public relations firm, Strategic Vision, conducted the poll for corporate clients.
“There’s a feeling that things are not going well. There are concerns about the economy, concerns about Iraq. … They don’t want a third term for Bush, not even Republicans. Among Democrats, I’ve never seen anything like it. And independents just want to be done with him.” ++
“So keep fightin’ for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don’t you forget to have fun doin’ it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin’ ass and celebratin’ the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was.”
~ Molly Ivins, 1944 - 2007
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